Account

BT revenue rises 35% but writes down £145m for Italy errors

BT has reported revenue of £6bn, a 35% year on year increase, for the three months to 30 September.

Alex Baldwin: starred in BT's campaign this year promoting its internet service

In its results published today, BT also reported a rise in profit before tax of 5% to £671m.

However the telecoms giant has written down £145m after it found "certain historical accounting errors and reassessed certain areas of management judgement" at BT Italia.

The report added: "The write down relates to balances that have built up over a number of years and our assessment is that the errors have not materially impacted the group’s reported earnings over the previous two years."

On Brexit, BT said it does not expect the UK's vote to leave the European Union to have a "significant impact" on its outlook and will continue to assess the longer term impact.

Gavin Patterson, chief executive at BT, said: "This is a positive set of results, both operationally and financially, and we remain on track to achieve our full-year outlook. We’ve made good progress on the integration of EE and the delivery of our synergy targets.

"Our consumer facing lines of business have performed well, but in the enterprise space, UK public sector continues to be a challenging market. Across the group, we continue to drive cost reduction and productivity improvements.

"Customer experience remains a key priority, and we’re stepping up our investments in the second half of the year. And we’ll continue to invest in our ultrafast and 4G plans in 2017 and beyond."